Acer Predator 15 Gaming Notebook Review

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Acer Predator 15 Gaming Notebook Review

The Acer Predator 15 is built like a tank. It’s the chunkiest laptop we’ve tested this year, by far. Right from its screen lid, bezel and its plush keyboard deck and palm rest, the entire surface of the laptop’s covered by premium reinforced plastic / tough matte exterior that gives it a unique matte touch and feel that we haven’t seen on any other laptop. Its frame weighs a whopping 3.6 kg, which is about a kilo more than a regular 15-inch laptop, but all that extra weight on the Predator is justifiably to give it extra power under the hood and turn it into an unbeatable gaming beast.

In terms of aesthetics, the laptop’s screen lid has a backlit Predator logo and two linear accents that give the Acer Predator some much needed character and attitude that’s reminiscent of the Dell Alienware laptops. With the the backlit keyboard, in near full darkness, the Predator 15 emanates a warm red glow which gives it a surreal look, which is awesome! All this undoubtedly adds to the unique appeal of the notebook that’s guaranteed to make heads turn at whichever LAN gaming party you attend in a cyber cafe or show off at your friend’s place.

The Acer Predator has several things going for it that helps its cause, making it stand out from the rest of the contenders in the hotly competitive gaming laptop market. It has a 4K screen – not that you’ll be using this a lot while gaming – which future proofs the device. It has one of the best gaming keyboards from SteelSeries that we’ve seen on a laptop – the feedback is just right and an abundance of macros help the gamer’s cause. The Predator 15’s wide palm rest has a large trackpad that’s quite sensitive on touch. Above the trackpad is a button to toggle the trackpad on or off, which is very beneficial in high-intensity gaming scenarios.

In terms of performance, let’s start with the audio potential of the Acer Predator 15. With two red speaker grilles situated on either side of the front lip, and a subwoofer lining its bottom panel, the Predator 15 packs a powerful punch with its audio performance. We’ve always maintained that the Dynaudio speakers on the MSI G series of laptops are the best we’ve ever experienced on a notebook form factor, but the Acer’s onboard audio makes us seriously re-evaluate the fact. The Acer’s audio performance is seriously good!

As you can probably make out from this laptop’s specifications column, it’s packed to the gills with uncompromising performance hardware. The concoction cooked up by a top-of-the-line quad-core processor in tandem with fast-paced SSD, oodles of RAM and NVIDIA GTX 980M graphics with a whopping 4GB of GDDR5 memory is enough to subdue any game out there.We had a blast playing our favourite games on the Acer Predator 15 – Counter Strike Global Offensive, GTA V, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and more. And the laptop handled all these games effortlessly at their max settings. We encountered no problems whatsoever while gaming on Full HD resolution. Even its battery life of 169 minutes is greater than what we encountered on the MSI GT72 and MSI GE62 gaming laptops, respectively. If anything, the Acer Predator 15 runs only a bit too hotter than the recorded temperature of the two MSI laptops. That’s about the only flaw in this otherwise fantastic gaming machine. However, the Acer offers a hot-swappable fan module to insert into its right edge which can help keep temps under control.

We had a blast playing our favourite games on the Acer Predator 15 – Counter Strike Global Offensive, GTA V, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and more. And the laptop handled all these games effortlessly at their max settings. We encountered no problems whatsoever while gaming on Full HD resolution. Even its battery life of 169 minutes is greater than what we encountered on the MSI GT72 and GE62 gaming laptops, respectively. If anything, the Acer Predator 15 runs only a bit too hotter than the recorded temperature of the two MSI laptops. That’s about the only flaw in this otherwise fantastic gaming machine. However, the Acer offers a hot-swappable fan module to insert into its right edge which can help keep temps under control.

Acer Predator 15 – Verdict

The Acer Predator 15 also comes with above-average connectivity options, Killer networking adapters, and a TPM chip to encrypt data. It has Predator Sense built-in, allowing you to overclock its CPU speed into three different presets, depending on load. The laptop also supports RAID. All in all, this is a true gamer’s delight. If you have the money for it, this is undoubtedly the best gaming notebook to buy in the market right now.

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Jayesh "Big Daddy" Shinde

Cower, puny human, for I am Big Daddy! The ground rumbles beneath my feet, the very air you breathe resonates to my primal roar. Mere mortals, I am the scourge of the n00bs, destroyer of worlds. Fear my might, tremble in my presence and I might grant you your life.

SKOAR! is India's Premier Gaming Website. SKOAR! began its journey as a bi-monthly publication in 2003 and has since kept growing. Through this journey, it has evolved from a purely print magazine to an interactive magazine and now, has made its foray into the digital space. BTW, why on earth are you reading this part? Ran out of articles to read? Weren't we entertaining enough? Maybe you're just bored, so you might as well go pester the editor or troll someone in the comments ;-)